Doomsday stack

[Bobby53]

StartEd playing a game as the USA, 1941, fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. I panned over to see want was going on in China. That’s when I noticed a 30 unit stack of British units, with some of their best commander, just sitting in Hong Kong, seriously?? I thought the doomsday stack of units was fixed years ago?

 

[deadmanhope]

hmmmm....are you playing a mod or just the base game....i never seen the british actually fight in china....especially 1941....i think that whats happening is that the BRITISH AI is gathering forces to invade japan....something else that in 1941 you wouldnt expect the british ai to do.....the AI likes to gather all its forces in one spot to do an invasion but it takes a while...often waiting for the ships to be builded....unless you game went off the rails the british ai SHOULD be fighting in afraca and garrsioning england not fighting a war in asia

 

[Rohi]

StartEd playing a game as the USA, 1941, fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. I panned over to see want was going on in China. That’s when I noticed a 30 unit stack of British units, with some of their best commander, just sitting in Hong Kong, seriously?? I thought the doomsday stack of units was fixed years ago?

A doomstack on an island? Now this does seem strange. As you mentioned, they were common in the earlier versions of Hearts of Iron 2 -- and were one of the primary criticisms and reasons why people went to other versions of Hearts of Iron -- however it appears, at least in other mods of Darkest Hour, that the doomstacks, to an extent, were removed. So perhaps the following comment is on to something:

i think that whats happening is that the BRITISH AI is gathering forces to invade japan....

The quoted comment here seems likely. But who knows?

Personally curious to know what happened with that island doomstack in later years.

 

[DrJunkid]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/trp-1-04-february-11-2018.1069287/page-25

Hi,
perhaps TRP ?

 

[Bobby53]

Thanks for the reply’s, I’m not using a mod with this game, it’s vanilla DH 1.05. The doom stacks do kind of ruin the game. The only thing, I can think might of happened. I accepted the decision to control the Chinese armies, but then cancelled it. China surrendered a couple of months later. The large amount of British units in Hong Kong, were maybe, getting ready to invade China?

 

[Rohi]

The doom stacks do kind of ruin the game.

This is arguably one of the most valid criticisms of Hearts of Iron 2 going back many, many years. Fortunately, Darkest Hour provided a major improvement on the HoI2 doom stack situation which is why the thread here is intriguing. It seems the comments proposing the A.I. is preparing for a naval invasion are the likely reason.

Personally noticed that the A.I. does create mini stacks in locations which are then eventually coordinated in an attempted naval invasion. For instance, during a Siam/Thailand scenario in Kaiserreich, personally experienced not only numerous naval invasions from the A.I. Germany, but also the change-of-hands of various islands. Granted, the mod was Kaiserreich, but surely Darkest Hour vanilla uses similar A.I.?

The point here is that there's no doubt Darkest Hour significantly improved on HoI2. In fact, it's a rather pleasant experience to have the A.I. attempt sneaky naval invasions knowing that in the early days of HoI2 such naval invasions by the A.I. were incredibly rare -- if they ever occurred at all. Comparing the current Darkest Hour (and mods) with the early days of HoI2, one can attest to the vast improvement by recognizing in the early days it was arguably not necessary to defend coastal provinces because sneaky A.I. naval invasions were not likely. Now, however, an unguarded beach province is a possible target and should be guarded.

Hopefully someone can provide a thorough and detailed reason explaining why the doom stacks in these island cases appear because there is valid criticism to be made that such situations can ruin the armchair general experience which HoI2 seems to provide so well -- not considering doom stacks, of course.

 

[Lord Rommel]

The stacking is a general problem of the AI routine.
It is quiet common and wasnt fixed in any HoI II version.
DH had solved "some of the old doomsday stack stations" because the new DH map is better in design and layout.

Most of the stacking problem is a result of bad province layout/situation, AI province priority and front settings.
Such a stack is quiet common for Hong Kong because it is a single province linked with another single province behind a river.
Furthermore Hong Kong is an urban province. So u have a combination of some of the worst province and combat modifiers
(river penalty, urban combat, single attack province [stack limitation]). Now add bad/non-existing AI combat intelligence and u get
the best base case scenario for a "doomsday stack scenario". You can enforce the scenario even more by fortress placement, bad stats for
the attacking nation and a front AI that will send more and more units to equal the growing numbers of the enemy.
A human player could work around such a situation by using airforce attacks or naval attacks (attack infra, attack convoys) but the AI
cant coordinate such a combined armes effort. In the end it will cause your "doomsday stacks".

Other regular candidates are Singapore, Sevastopol and Kuressaare.

 

[Mimmmo]

Gibraltar too